Aktuelle Hits verstehen : „21 Guns“ von Green Day
Aktuelle Hits zu verstehen ist oft nicht ganz leicht. Gut, wenn ein Engländer erklärt, worum es dabei eigentlich geht. David Fermer erzählt diesmal - auf englisch - über „21 Guns“ von Green Day. Fürs Hörverständnis mit Audio.
It hasn't been a particularly hot and sunny summer this year in Germany, so some of you may have spent some time in the cinema during your holidays. If you did, you might have seen a sci-fi film about Autobots and Decepticons called “Transformers - the Revenge of the Fallen“. In that case, you'll probably remember a song that was played four times during the film. That song was “21 Guns“.
Since releasing their highly popular album, “American Idiot“, back in 2004, things have been rather quiet around the punk rock band, Green Day. But now the Californian trio have recorded their eighth album. Originally it had nothing to do with the Transformers film. The band started working on the album back in 2006 - which just goes to show how long it takes to make a good album. The album was released in May this year, and two of its singles are now doing well in the charts. One of them is „21 Guns“.
When Green Day wrote the song “21 Guns“, they weren't thinking about the robot wars between Autobots and Decepticons. They were more likely thinking about the political situation in the USA. “21 Guns“ is a song which asks America to “lay down your arms / give up the fight“. It's easy to think the band is talking about the American military operation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Other lyrics like “When you're at the end of the road / and you've lost all sense of control …“ also seem to comment on the American situation.
“You're in ruins“, sings Billie Joe Armstrong, the band's lead vocalist who was once a loud critic of the Bush government and whose “faith walks on broken glass“. He says it's time to “throw up your arms / into the sky“ in an act of capitulation.
A 21 gun salute, by the way, is when canons fire 21 rounds of ammunition as a salute to heads of state upon an important celebration. Ironically, it's precisely these heads of state who decide “what's worth fighting for“ - even if Green Day thinks “it's not worth dying for.“
revenge = Rache
lay down your arms = die Waffen niederlegen
sense = Sinn
in ruins = in Trümmern
faith = Glaube
salute = Gruß
Head of state = Staatsoberhaupt
to be worth it = sich lohnen
Aktuelle Hits zu verstehen ist oft nicht ganz leicht. David Fermer ist Engländer und lebt in Deutschland. Er schreibt zweisprachige Bücher wie „Nonstop Chatten“ und erklärt in der Rhein-Main-Zeitung einmal im Monat den Hintergrund zu einem Liedtext. Seine Kolumne „Lyric Lane“ erscheint mittwochs auf „Unsere Seite“.
